Helen Chappell, photographs by Starke Jett VThe Chesapeake Book of the Dead: Tombstones, Epitaphs, Histories, Reflections, and Oddments of the RegionJohns Hopkins University Press 1999 0801860415 / 9780801860416 hardback 150 pages, 42 illus, hardback, Johns Hopkins University Press "There is a romantic, nostalgic, pleasantly melancholy feeling to old cemeteries that is hard to define but easy to experience. Perhaps it is because we can feel the direct link to our past that no history book, no movie, no historical fantasy can ever convey. These stones and these unkempt grounds are the hard evidence of lives that came before us. Once, these people lived and breathed, loved, worked, fought, hoped and despaired, and experienced their triumphs and failures just as we do today. And, although we seldom care to acknowledge it, we will inevitably go where they have gone."-from the PrefaceFor the many people who enjoy walking through old cemeteries, exploring forgotten and overgrown graveyards, and reading the names, dates, and epitaphs of the dead, the Chesapeake Bay region offers a rich assortment of final resting places, many dating back to the early 1600s. From Williamsburg to Havre de Grace, it is not uncommon to see a number of the living wandering among the markers of the dead. Some are genealogists and historians, others come in search of quietude and a tangible connection to the past.In The Chesapeake Book of the Dead, Helen Chappell and photographer Starke Jett survey this rich legacy, from the vast and imposing Arlington National Cemetery to lone graves so modest as to have been lost almost as soon as they were dug. Chappell and Jett visit graveyards of the famous and the obscure, wander through cemeteries dotted with both elaborate funerary and simple, weather-beaten headstones, and discover epitaphs that range from the literary to the amusing to the poignant. As old grave sites disappear under developers' bulldozers, through neglect, and at the hands of unscrupulous headstone collectors, this remarkable book offers a unique and elegiac look at our past and its tales of love and tragedy.Among the cemeteries explored are Southeast Washington's Congressional Cemetery (posthumous home to composer John Philip Sousa, FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, pioneering feminist and muckraking journalist Anne Royall, and Choctaw chief and notable military tactician Pushmataha); Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery (built in the 1830s as Baltimore's first sylvan graveyard); and Westminster Burying Ground in downtown Baltimore. At Westminster lies the grave of Edgar Allan Poe, which a mysterious figure visits each year on Poe's birthday to leave roses and a bottle of brandy. The book also describes the final resting places for such celebrities as Dorothy Parker (Chappell located her ashes at the NAACP headquarters in Baltimore), F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (buried in Rockville at Scott's wish, because, he insisted, "I belong here," in Maryland, "where everything is civilized and gay and rotted and polite"), and cosmopolitan actress Tallulah Bankhead (interred in a plot her sister provided near Chestertown).Included throughout this fascinating book are essays on mourning fashion and deathbed performances, graveyard ghost stories, discussions of efforts to save historic cemeteries, and notes from the diary of a nineteenth-century doctor who today is buried in Rising Sun Cemetery alongside many of his patients. Chappell's lively prose, accompanied by Jett's haunting black-and-white photographs, will delight all those drawn to the seclusion, peacefulness, and melancholy of old graveyards.Jacket illustration: Lower Hooper's Island, Maryland

About AuthorWriter Helen Chappell, a columnist for the Tidewater Times and frequent contributor to the Baltimore Sun and the Washington Post, is the author of numerous books, including The Oysterback Tales, also available from Johns Hopkins, and Oysterback Spoken Here, as well as the Sam Wescott-Hollis Ball mystery series, of which Give Up the Ghost is the most recent example. Chappell lives on Maryland's Eastern Shore.Starke Jett V has received numerous awards of excellence for his photographs, which have appeared in such publications as Chespeake Bay, Soundings, Wooden Boat, and Classic Boat. In 1991 and 1992, he worked on a project documenting the watermen of the Northern Neck of Virginia in association with the Reedville Fisherman's Museum and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy.

Reviews & Awards"From Helen Chappell, a native and resident of Talbot County and one of the very best writers in the region, come observation and musing about dead people, graveyards, tombstones, funerals, burials, and grieving customs around the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, Virginia, and D.C . . . Being witty as well as serious about death in the same book is a risky business, of course. But Chappell manages it handily . . . The best-written and most entertaining new book on the subject."--John Goodspeed, Easton Star Democrat

Jeanne Majdalany and Jean MulkerinPoems on Stone in Stamford, Connecticut0788408682 / 9780788408687 (1980) reprint, 51/2x81/2, paper, index, 188 pp, This lovely collection of poems was compiled from tombstones in and around Stamford, CT, to preserve these existing works of folk art before they are forever lost. This book contains about 370 poems from 45 different burial grounds. They are listed according to the areas from which they came, so the researcher can locate them without a problem. Each entry gives the name of the deceased, date of death, final age, and the epitaph as it reads on the grave marker. The book is not intended to be a genealogical guide, but the authors do provide names of several reference books in case the reader is interested in the family histories. Maps of Stamford, Darien and the original Stamford area of New Canaan before 1801 are included; along with the maps is a listing of all the cemeteries, providing their location, general condition, and dates of existence.

Terry JordanTexas Graveyards: A Cultural LegacyUniversity of Texas Press 1982 0292780702 / 9780292780705 paperback 160 pages, 7 x 10, 128 b&w photos, paperback, University of Texas Press Where more poignantly than in a small country graveyard can a traveler fathom the flow of history and tradition? During the past twenty years, Terry G. Jordan has traveled the back roads and hidden trails of rural Texas in search of such cemeteries. With camera in hand, he has visited more than one thousand cemeteries created and maintained by the Anglo-American, black, Indian, Mexican, and German settlers of Texas. His discoveries of sculptured stones and mounds, hex signs and epitaphs, intricate landscapes and unusual decorations represent a previously unstudied and unappreciated wealth of Texas folk art and tradition. Texas Graveyards not only marks the distinct ethnic and racial traditions in burial practices but also preserves a Texas legacy endangered by changing customs, rural depopulation, vandalism, and the erosion of time.

About AuthorA sixth-generation Texan, the late Terry G. Jordan held the Walter Prescott Webb Chair in History and Ideas in the Department of Geography at the University of Texas at Austin.

Reviews & Awards"...throw away your inhibitions, forget the ghost stories, and travel with Terry Jordan through the fascinating world of tombstones and epitaphs, the departed, the remaining, and the odd, revealing ways in which we honor the dead.... Jordan treats his subject with respect in both words and pictures." —Southern Living

"...Jordan's wonderful Texas Graveyards is a tour of Texas history in quite a unique way.... the book is a genuine masterpiece." —El Paso Times